Josh Kleinbaum
Greg Krikorian can spout family history like a faucet.
Two of his grandparents fled the Kharpet region of Turkish Armenia
for America during World War I to escape the genocide, and one
grandfather joined the United States Army to fight Turkey, which was
part of the Axis forces.
His other grandparents left Kharpet in the early 1920s for France,
took a boat to Ellis Island and settled in Hartford, Conn.
When Krikorian talks about his family, he does so with the passion
of a history major looking through a window into the past. During the
next two weeks, Krikorian's view through that window will get a whole
lot clearer.
Krikorian, a member of the Glendale Unified School District school
board, is a member of an 18-person delegation from Glendale departing
on Thursday for a 10-day trip to Armenia. Like Krikorian, many
members of the trip, which includes school, city and college
officials, will balance personal background with business.
"To have my actual presence in Armenia, where my grandparents were
forced out of, to have that opportunity to go back to part of my
homeland, it's a tremendous feeling for me," Krikorian said. "There's
a lot of emotion in me."
Other delegates include Mayor Frank Quintero, City Manager Jim
Starbird, Councilman Rafi Manoukian, School Board President Pam
Ellis, and Paul Schlossman, the dean of student affairs at Glendale
Community College.
Artin Manoukian, president of the Glendale-Ghapan Sister City
Assn., which organized the trip, said the trip would be part
educational, part informational, part political and part cultural.
The group has meetings with the prime minister and the U.S.
ambassador, and will spend time in Ghapan, Glendale's sister city.
"I'd like to learn a bit more about the way they operate at local
level, and the amount of input that the community has into everyday
lives," said Rafi Manoukian, who has been to Armenia once before.
With about 70,000 Armenian Americans living in Glendale, Rafi
Manoukian hopes that the trip will help all of the delegates better
understand their constituents.
The Glendale-Ghapan Sister City Assn. is footing the bill for the
eight public and school officials going on the trip, and the other 10
are paying their own way.
